The Internet Security Alliance (ISA) strongly supports Chairman Mark Green’s Cyber PIVOTT Act which is headed to markup tomorrow. Sens. Mike Rounds (R-SD) and Gary Peters (D-MI) introduced the bipartisan companion legislation in the Senate. The bill received bipartisan support in the House when it advanced out of Committee in the 118th Congress.
If enacted, this bill would be the most impactful piece of cybersecurity legislation ever passed by the US Congress by addressing the USA’s most basic cybersecurity need – the lack of an adequately trained cybersecurity workforce – at scale.
None of our country’s cybersecurity programs can operate properly without an adequately trained workforce. The technology can’t work, the standards can’t work, the frameworks can’t work, the regulations can’t work. Nothing can work effectively without an adequately trained workforce.
Currently we have an estimated workforce shortage of 500,000 people – an estimated 35,000 people short in the federal government alone – and the gap is growing at up to 10% a year. When fully operational, the PIVOTT Act’s 10,000 new recruits a year will begin to make a dent in this gap.
The PIVOTT Act addresses a core problem with traditional cyber workforce programs by focusing on recruiting previously under-targeted groups such as certification programs and community colleges by expanding the traditional military academy model of providing free security training in return for government service. In doing so, PIVOTT Act recognizes that cybersecurity is a matter of critical national and homeland security equivalent to traditional military defense.
The graduates of the PIVOTT program will also become available to the badly underfunded cybersecurity programs in state and local governments, which, due to their interconnections with the federal government currently represent a major – and currently unsecured – vulnerability to our national cyber systems.
PIVOTT is also a cost-effective approach to the cyber workforce problem since the PIVOTT graduates will be able to replace the high-priced independent contractors the government currently needs to hire from the open market at vastly inflated costs.
PIVOTT will be the ISA’s number one legislative priority in the Congress, and we urge all entities who care about our nation’s cybersecurity to join in aggressively supporting PIVOTT’s passage in the House, Senate, and eventually receive President Trump’s signature.
